Winter habitat partitioning between Asiatic ibex and Blue sheep in Ladakh, Northern India

Asiatic ibex Capra ibex sibrica and blue sheep Pseudois nayaur are the most abundant wild ungulates in the Ladakh Region of the Indian Trans-Himalaya. Both species use rugged terrain to escape predation, and the competitive exclusion principle suggests that the distribution of one species may be affected by the presence of the other. I evaluated habitat use by these mountain ungulates in the Shun Gorge, at the eastern boundary of ibex distribution in the Zangskar Mountains, Ladakh, India. I hypothesised that due to their high affinity toward cliffs as a predator escape strategy, ibex and blue sheep overlap in their habitat use, especially in winter when they are likely to be confined by snow cover. Resource selection indices and chi-square statistics revealed that both ibex and blue sheep prefer habitat close (1-50 m) to cliffs. The two species were also similar in their use of habitat in terms of slope angle, except that ibex avoided gentle slopes (45°). Both used habitats in terms of elevation and snow cover non-selectively except that blue sheep avoided very low areas (